• Who is this chick anyway?

Nova Terra

~ Just another way of stalling on my other writing

Nova Terra

Tag Archives: pain meds

That Place You Hate to Hurt

14 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bodies, life, meditation, pain, pain meds

Yeah, that one.

I have injured a small piece of my body, and I am very unhappy about it. It seems to have thrown everything off, and the punishment does not fit the crime.

Think about them for a moment, the small lumpy bits. They stick out and get caught on things. Or else they’re a passageway from Point A to Point B. Maybe they get ambitions of grandeur, like when your earlobes get those tiny cysts that feel like lentils of pure pain. Whatever. We’ve all got them, we all stub, overexert, and endanger them on a weekly, if not daily, basis. It’s their job. Somebody had to be the toe on the end; them’s the breaks.

But how then, I ask you, do they then turn into such divas? I’m always reminded of those useful homunculi illustrating the relative intensity of the nerves, although right now I’d say they’re wrong, because my small body part is carrying the rest of me along in a wagon.

So I sit here, alternately trying to ignore the discomfort or to acknowledge and embrace it, occasionally flexing my owie in experimentation, and in general letting it harsh my mellow. I find that the “acknowledge and embrace” school has some pointers: When I concentrate on the actual pain, it seems to pull in its snaky tendrils of domination and once more become just one of the little guys.  An abused, underappreciated little guy, now in rebellion.

However, I have meditating to do and a ferret to exercise. (When you are mindful, the two are not exclusive.) Come along, wee wound, dry your eyes. Human consciousness 1, somatic distraction 0! Woohoo for the home team!

Or maybe my fibro meds are starting to hit. Whatever; I’ll take it. Wouldn’t you?

Advertisement

I Don’t Wanna Go to Rehab

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

pain, pain meds, rehab, total knee replacement

Well, I didn’t . It conjured up the picture (or whatever sensory thing it is) of old person pee; this because I know some folks who live in “rehabilitation facilities” and they’re just nursing homes. Nope, I was going home after my three days in the Beth Israel tomb and hiking up them steps like a mutha-sheeper. This was my plan.

Instead, I found out that for many practical purposes, “total knee replacement” means “removing your leg and replacing it with a pillar of pain.” I needed Mommy to help me pee; no way was I going home to my kids like that.

So, off to rehab we went, me and my stuffed leopard Max, who I discovered is useful as a cervical pillow. There was a support strut up the length of the ambulance’s stretcher that dug into the sore place worn into my butt by four days in bed, and I spent an hour trying to wiggle around it and not make prolonged eye contact with the car in back of us, because weird.

My rehab hospital was in the boonies of Woburn (pronounced WOO-burn) and I was there for only two weeks, because (to quote a certain popular video game) I was filled with determination. I had three hours of therapy a day except on the weekends: an hour of individual PT with the adorable Amy, another hour of OT with the lovable Leigh, who re-introduced me to the wonderful world of personal hygiene with tactful assistance, and then Gait Group, which was boring and rubbed my nose into what a wussy I still was. Those 37 steps loomed over me like a monster guarding the gates to my longed-for home, and I was vastly relieved when Amy and I worked out how to do the hardest part, which is stepping through the door of my building.

Little by little the knee became more cooperative. I got a canned lecture on how Pain Meds Are Bad while I was there, which was weird, because my surgeon’s practice has made it clear that there’s only a certain window to bring the knee fully online, and if pain is getting in the way, it makes the whole freaking exercise pointless, and you can always just be brought off the meds if needed. (Yay! say I. Especially since the anticoagulant for the blood clots mean I can’t use NSAIDs like most post-surgical folks.)

I ordered some basic stuff while there, joining Amazon Prime to make sure it got home in time: Handlebars for my john, a bench for my shower, and a couple of reaching tools which have captivated the cat, who can’t get her tail grabbed by them often enough. I recommend all these things.

Then the golden moment came when the bestie showed up to spring me the hell out of there. It hadn’t been a bad stay–bed was comfy, roommates nice–but the night shift left something to be desired in terms of getting the pain meds out on time. (I Officially Complained, which caused a minor kerfuffle, with night service improving radically afterwards. Use that phone number on the wall, patients of the world!)

And with the help of my daughter at thar sheeping doorway, I made it up all 37 steps just fine. Yay me!

Nova Terra

just another way of stalling on my other writing

Categories

  • Blog
  • Fiction
June 2023
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« May    

Blogroll

  • Aaaand it's my brand new Patreon page! (Still being set up.)
  • All the Google Doodles
  • And there's even a Google Doodle store!
  • BBC has all these nifty all-about-you tests . . .
  • Free downloadable SF books! Good ones! Really! Legit even!
  • Help transcribe the New York Public Library's menus! Minimal effort required!
  • Lunar Calendar
  • My YouTube favorites, in case you're bored or curious
  • Places to increase your mellow
  • rathergood.com. Well, pretty darn good.
  • The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette. Really. Awesome.
  • The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody
  • The Onion interview with God, September 2001
  • Translate Japanese characters to Roman letters
  • Want a koan? Pick a koan. Any koan.
  • What people of X height look like at Y weight

Stupid Art! doh!

  • Graph Paper of the Gods
  • The Museum of Bad Art

Stupid Writing! doh!

  • By golly, this is a pretty darn good Inuit-family language vocab site!
  • Lunar Calendar
  • Random noun generator
  • Revised Standard Version
  • The Bible

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Nova Terra
    • Join 169 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Nova Terra
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar